


the night

by elicul



Series: it ends or it doesn't [2]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Depression, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicidal Thoughts, Season/Series 06, Self-Harm, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-06 05:06:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19055824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elicul/pseuds/elicul
Summary: Jake realizes it's not fair, anymore. The secrets he's kept from his wife. He loves her, and that's half the reason he hasn't told her. But he's going to try to be honest.*The problem is, Amy doesn't know about any of this. "The past is in the past" had been his thinking, until his thinking turned and now all Jake wants to do is curl up in a ball and wait to die.So he tells his therapist. Who tells him to tell Amy.





	the night

**Author's Note:**

> see tags, title again a reference to the Caitlyn Siehl poem of the same title as this series

Jake’s not sure how noticeable the scars are, really.  _He_ knows they’re there, remembers the night he got a few of them, can hear skin tearing if his mind is doing that spiral down thing, like a slow-draining sink.

Their presence on his body have kept him from sex on first dates, swimming in the lake with the 99 the summer they went upstate, taking showers with Amy. 

When he moves her hand away from where the scars lie tangled on his hip, he must look so disgusted with himself, because she’s stopped placing her hands there. She must assume it’s just an area he’s self-conscious about, like how he hates when people touch his hair, or when he’s not anticipating a comment about his weight and he has a hard time eating for the rest of that day. 

Amy notices things like that. Jake wears his heart on his sleeve, there's not much he could hide from her, even if he tried, so she notices, but she doesn't worry. 

 

 

Right after they got married, Jake decided to start therapy. He felt secure enough in his life--his friends, his work, his relationship with Amy--and he'd always sorta known he needed it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It takes a while for the scars to come up with his therapist. And it's all Gina's fault.

(Which is to say, none of it is Gina's fault, but he wants to blame someone other than himself for a minute.)

Gina knew him. Scarily knew him. And even though she'd been distant recently, each of them busy with their own lives, she'd texted him about a case she saw trending on Twitter. The case had ended up going about as sideways as a case can go and nearly cost Jake his job. Article after article was published citing the NYPD's incompetence, "Detective Jacob Peralta" often being mentioned in the first few lines.

_holding up okay?_

That's all it had taken. The weight of the case had come crashing down on him and he tried to stay light and breezy, but she knew better.

_stay safe._

And maybe she hadn't meant anything by it. Maybe she hadn't even been referencing an old and backwards coping mechanism Jake had developed as a teenager and fought off occasionally into adulthood. But Gina knew him. And he knew what she meant.

And it wasn't just the case. Maybe the case had only gone wrong because he was so hellbent on ignoring the signs that things were getting bad again. Jake had felt himself slipping, knew that when he didn't want to go to work, lost interest in sex, had to be reminded (by Charles, by Terry, by Rosa) to make "title of your sex tape" jokes and Die Hard references, things weren't looking good.

But the problem is, Amy doesn't know about any of this. "The past is in the past" had been his thinking, until his thinking turned and now all Jake wants to do is curl up in a ball and wait to die.

So he tells his therapist.

Who tells him to tell Amy.

Who is now offering to make dinner even though she can't cook to save her life, all because Jake can barely get out of bed, let alone cook. Let alone eat.

 

 

Amy stands in the doorway to their bedroom. She leaves the lights off because Jake had claimed a migraine when he'd gone to bed.

"I'm sure I could make some pasta," she offers. "Boiling water and setting timers are within my, admittedly limited, skill set." She smiles. Jake can hear it in her voice even though he doesn't look up from where he'd set his gaze on the ceiling. He hates himself for not being able to just be. Be a person. Function. Talk to his wife, make dinner, do something other than drag his body to work and back to bed in a weeks-long loop.

 "That's okay, Ames. I'm not really hungry."

"Yeah, you said that earlier."

 

 

He can picture her face: mouth twisted up to the side, eyebrows knotting and unknotting while she works through her options. _Their_ options. He's being selfish, leaving her alone to deal with things she both knows nothing about and needn't claim any responsibility for.

His therapist hadn't really said _how_  to talk to Amy. But that could have more to due with the fact that he hasn't gone to therapy in three weeks because it's just another obligation he can't handle and another person to disappoint.

"Amy?"

She sounds so relieved at his voice. At his saying her name. "Yeah?"

"I need to tell you something."

Jake keeps his eyes up on the ceiling. He wants to look at her. He wants to stop just picturing her face, wants to see the woman he loves, but it scares him. That she might look confused and concerned and scared.

"You can tell me anything." It sounds like she's shifted her weight to lean against the doorframe.

"I need-" he begins, but it's like he runs out of air before he can finish. He takes in a deep breath and tries again. "I need a few minutes. Let me get up, change my clothes, at least."

"Okay." She sounds almost put out, but she's gone by the time he manages to sit up. He runs a hand down his face and looks around for a change of clothes.

 

 

Amy's in the living room, doing a sudoku puzzle in a tiny book on the couch, when he finds her.

"Hey," she says, offering him the sweetest smile.

"Hey."

She sets the book down on the coffee table, closed with her pen inside to mark her page because she isn't the kind of monster who breaks book spines by placing them open, face down on tables. She watches him.

He wishes he could muster up the ability to cry. He wants her to hold him, to make him feel safe and cared for and loved, but he does't know how to ask, and he isn't sure if it counts, if you have to ask.

"You wanted to talk?"

He nods, but stays rooted to his spot. At first, she curls up tighter on herself, hugging her knees to her chest, but then she turns and sits on the edge of the couch. Like she's remembered something she read once, something about body language. She holds her hand out to silently call Jake to her. And he'd go wherever she called, so he walks towards her hand without taking it and they sit together on the couch, angled towards one another, but not touching.

She smoothes her hands over her lap and nervously tucks her hair behind her ears a few times. "Am I supposed to be saying something?" 

 

 

"Do you have anything to say?"

She glances up at him and then away, nodding.

"Then you have the floor, Mrs. Santiago."

"I love you," she says, starting strong, then faltering a little. "I love you, but- no, not 'but' because that contradicts the I love you. I, um. I love you, and I'm scared. You're scaring me, a little. Should I be? Scared? A little?"

He isn't sure what to say. 'Yes' has a certain drama to it. 'No' does't feel entirely truthful. "However you feel, I'm sorry for my part in it-"

"No. No, that's not what I meant. You're obviously going through something and I get the work stress," Jake holds his hand up to stop her. "And th- Sorry."

Jake blinks quickly a few times, organizes his thoughts. "This might take me a while to get through. It's been a long time since I've had to talk about it. And it'll only take longer if we bat semantics back and forth."

She nods, eyebrows together, looking a little ashamed of her interruption, but still wholly focused, listening intently.

"So," he starts again. "I am sorry. I'm sorry I didn't tell you any of this sooner, and that my not telling you has gotten us into this situation."

Her eyebrows move together and apart again. She tilts her head. Jake has been reliably told that his most expressive feature is his mouth. Amy's is the way she holds her head. She nods a lot. Leans into or away from the person speaking, dependent on whether or not she agrees, or is repulsed, or wants to know more. Right now, she has her head cocked a little to one side. So her chin is closer to him than the rest of her face. So her hair fell out from behind her ear again. He wants to move it for her, but he doesn't. 

"Amy, I'm- uh. I'm depressed. Or, I have depression? I'm not sure which it is. Both, maybe."

She waits to respond until she knows he wants her to. "Oh, okay." It's a flat reaction. She knows because she winces a little at her own words and Jake almost wants to smile, a little. "Did your therapist just tell you? Is that why you stopped going?"

Jake shakes his head, but she doesn't see because she's so busy trying to say the right thing.

"Because I can understand that it might have been scary, or uncomfortable, to hear, but it's okay. I mean, it's not 'okay,' but, you know what I mean. It is okay. We'll get you through it. And it's important that you keep going. To therapy. I mean, if you want."

He loves her for the way she back-pedals and thinks more out loud than meditatively in her head before talking. He loves her for the misunderstanding, for the allowance of a little time to think after the news, but he needs to tell her the truth. 

"No. I mean, I'm sorry. Ah." He sits forward with his head in his hands for a second to collect himself. When he looks up, he tries so hard to meet her eye, keeps glancing over and away again because it's hard. It's hard to look at his wife and admit that he's all but lied to her for years. Kept secrets, at least. That he's not who she thinks he is, that he's fucked up and broken and...

Amy shifts herself back onto the couch and scoots away from him. A lump forms in Jake's throat as she adjusts, but then she gestures for him to lay down, to put his head in her lap. So he can talk without having to look at her. So she can be touching and reassuring him. 

He lays on his side, one hand under his head, the other on her knee. She strokes his hair, the very short part of it, behind his ear and at the base of his head, and lays her other hand on his arm. He counts his breaths to twenty before continuing. 

"I was diagnosed when I was fourteen. The depression, it. It isn't entirely persistent. Sometimes I don't feel it at all. Sometimes not for a really long time. But then it comes back. Sometimes worse or better than the last time, but it has an established pattern of coming back."

He can almost see the gears in Amy's head moving, but he keeps going. "Like, when I was fifteen and sixteen it was really bad. Lasted almost two straight years and I could barely do more than sleep. I fell asleep in every class, was failing everything, and I'd all but stopped eating, but for no reason than the fact that it was too much work. Gina and my mom tried to help, but it was really bad. And I started seeing a psychiatrist who started me on antidepressants, which I took until I was eighteen."

"But you stopped taking them?"

"I hadn't had an episode in over a year. I, stupidly, didn't think I needed them anymore. And it seemed that every two or so years it would come back again, but I always knew it would end. I'd cycle out of it and forget what it felt like and think I was okay again. And I've been doing more or less that ever since."

"So you're not on meds?"

He shakes his head and then rolls onto his back so he can look up at her. "No, but I'm not opposed to going back on them. I understand that they help, that they take away some of the weight of what I'm feeling so I can at least walk around with it, but I dunno. I never went back onto them for some reason or another. But I can. I could. If you asked or if I thought I needed them."

"Okay," is all she says. She seems far away in her thinking. Processing. He can practically see the buffering ellipses looping on her face. He lays there and enjoys the feeling of Amy running her hand absentmindedly across his chest. Eventually, she says, "So that's what's going on now? You're having another... episode?"

He nods stiffly, not really wanting to admit it, but also that's sorta the whole point of this conversation.

It'd been light out when he'd gone to bed. By now, the sun was nearly set. There was one lamp on, right behind Amy, and it set her in this ethereal glow. The lighting makes this all feel like a really weird dream.

"How bad is it?"

"I don't know... I- uh-" He digs his nails into his palm to see if he'll wake up.

"Scale of one to when you were a teenager," she suggests. 

Jake thinks. This entire conversation has been a balancing act. How much the truth was worth versus sparing her the gory details. Wanting her help versus just wanting her aware. Figuring out how much of this was just overdramatized in his head because he'd been feeling like this for weeks on end versus the knowledge that no one could dispute how he was feeling, as he's the only one feeling it, and he's allowed to be honest about how it feels.

In the end, he decides on, "Eight."

"Oh."

The muscle in Jake's jaw jumps as he grits his teeth together and tries to think of what to say. He'd been hoping Amy would have more to say than 'oh' because now his answer hangs in the air and he feels embarrassed, pathetic. He swallows hard, closes his eyes again.

He just wants this to be over with, but knows he won't bring it back up ever again if they leave it like this. "It's just. A few weeks ago, I wouldn't have said it was that bad. And, by now, most of the shit I was getting from that case is gone, it's just. I still can't find my way out of it. And it just keeps muting more things in my life. And when I feel this far away from, well, feeling anything, I start thinking..."

She gives him a minute to continue, but when he doesn't, she prompts, "Start thinking...?"

"I couldn't feel anything. Not good things, not bad things. Nothing at all, when I was depressed in high school. And, because everyone is an idiot when they're sixteen, and I thought it would help, I started hurting myself."

He feels Amy jump a little from under him, like fight or flight kicked in and told her to run. Like walking away from the conversation stops it from having happened.

But she stays. She settles her body, keeps it from its instincts though her voice is now high and tight. "Do you still? Hurt yourself?"

"Not since I've known you," he assures. "Not since a little before you were assigned as my partner at the 99."

"But you still think about it?"

Jake nods.

"And you're thinking about it again?"

He nods again, if a little slower and without looking at her.

"What do you want to do? Or," she sucks at the back of her teeth, looking for the right words. "What did you used to do?"

"I'd rather not..."

"I get that," she says as she goes back to stroking his hair, pushing it back from his forehead, which he likes the feeling of but usually doesn't allow because it messes up his hair. But they're at home, in their home, together, and she's seen what he looks like at his absolute worst, and she still tells him that she loves him, so he just lies there and allows himself to enjoy the feeling of her cool hand against his too warm skin. "I get it, I mean. I almost don't want to hear it. But, Jake. You can't tell me that you want to hurt yourself and not tell me how. I mean, you can. But I want to know so I might have some chance at helping you or stopping you or at least noticing when you've done it. So, please."

He breathes in long and slow. It's one of those frustrating things he's learned in therapy that he hates how well it works. He is so conscious of his breathing these days because he never used to notice how often he held it. Trapped breath in his lungs, in his throat. So he breathes now. Because he doesn't want to feel like that anymore, and this, it's something he can control. Remembering to breathe. 

"I had this best friend who smoked. And when he'd have only a drag of his cigarette left, he'd always offer it to me. Or, well, I'd asked once. And he gave it to me and I inhaled enough to make the cherry light up and I put it out on my wrist. And after that he'd offer it to me. And I wouldn't always take it, but sometimes I would." He knows the protests that Amy might offer.  _That's terrible, he was your friend, how could he let you do that?_ So he feels compelled to add, "We were both really fucked up. And I told him it helped me, and we were young, and stupid, and I'm sure he thought he was, you know, helping me.

"And then he and I stopped talking when I got better. It just got tense between us, we weren't the same anymore. We didn't fit. So when it got bad again a few years later I started cutting. And it took me a really long time to learn how to stop doing that.

"And since I know you'll ask, they're sort of everywhere, but those scars are mostly on my hip and they're really old and faded and I always move your hand away when you get close to them, so it's not something you would have noticed. And I used to wear a watch on my wrist to cover the burns, but they're almost entirely gone by now. Just... before you start wondering about that."

"Does anyone else know?"

"Just Gina. She texted me last week, asking how I was doing. And it made me start thinking about it again. Or, I was already thinking about it again, and it just gave me an excuse to think it louder."

"Is it very loud?"

Jake sighs. "I can handle it."

She nods. They're quiet for a long time.

 

 

He accidentally falls asleep.

The next thing he knows, she's trying to get him up. "Let's go to bed."

He goes straight to bed, and she goes into the bathroom to shower and brush her teeth and think and be by herself for a little while.

 

 

They're both in bed later when Amy realizes she won't be able to sleep without asking Jake a few more questions about their conversation from earlier. She flips around in the bed, telling herself to let it go for the evening, deal with her sleeplessness on her own, give both herself and Jake a little time before they have to talk about this again.

But, in the end, she can't wait. She has to know.

"I read an article," she starts, and Jake rolls over to turn on the light and rolls back again so he's lying down, facing her, "about a 'class clown' who was advising that readers look at the funny guys in their life, check in and make sure that they were okay. Because the author said he'd had depression most of his life, which sometimes even made him suicidal, and he never wanted anyone else to feel that way, so he was always trying to make people laugh. Make them feel good. And even as I was reading the article, I was thinking of you. I should have talked to you, then. I might have spared you this conversation."

"It would have just been a different conversation."

She sits up because this doesn't feel like a lying down conversation anymore. "Yeah, but, Jake, I could have been helping you. All this time since I read that article. But we'd just started dating and I maybe knew or suspected, but I didn't want to know. So I told myself it was all in my head, that you were okay. And I'm sorry."

"Listen, Ames. Nothing here is your fault." He moves towards her, so he's laying on her chest, talking to her boobs, his arms wrapped around her waist. It's one of his favorite ways to lay with her. When he's tired and she wants to stay up reading. She wraps her arm around his shoulders and he can feel small and safe. "You haven't done a single thing wrong. You make me so happy, I am so happy that I have you in my life, that I get to wake up and see you every morning.

"This depression thing, it's been a part of my life the entire time I've known you, since long before I knew you. And I should have told you. But it is something so outside of you, so separate, and it's been so  _inside_ of me that I wanted to keep it that way. But it didn't seem like it was a fair thing to do anymore. That's why I told you."

"I know it's a little weird to say, but I'm glad you told me."

Jake lets his eyes slip closed.

"Do you ever feel that way?" She asks, in a small voice, after a few minutes of quiet. 

He turns and looks up at her, shaking his head in confusion.

"Are you ever- Do you ever not want to-" She bites her lip.

Jake thinks he knows what she's asking and decides to spare her having to say it. "Am I suicidal?"

She nods, teeth coming down harder on her lip so the skin around it turns white.

Now they're both sitting up in bed. He wants to reassure her, but also not lie. It's so much more difficult than he had imagined, telling her all of this. Hurting her so intentionally with the stupid things that he feels.

But some part of him argues that it would hurt her more if she didn't know. If she found out some other way. Like from Gina, or from her catching him hurting himself, or from coming home and he's not there anymore.

"Less and less the older I get," he says. "But still sometimes, yeah."

He hadn't meant to make her cry, but she does. A few tears fall and he reaches up to wipe them away and squeeze her hand. She looks straight up to stop them falling. "Is there- Is there anything I can do?"

"I don't know. Not tonight, anyway."

"Okay."

They're quiet for long enough that Jake goes to turn off the light. They lay down so Amy is wrapped around Jake's back. He likes being the little spoon.

The room is dark and quiet, but not sleepy feeling. He feels so anxious it's like bugs are crawling around inside of him and he has to know.

"You still love me?"

Jake hates the way his voice sounds when he says it. So insecure. Breaking on the idea that she might not love him anymore. Like he's said, he's usually secure in his relationship with her, he knows they both love each other, but it doesn't stop the fear, doesn't ease the tightness in his chest until she says it.

"I love you. Of course, I still love you."

 

 

By the next week, Amy's made a binder. And, really, what else was he expecting? There's a table of contents he flips through and with each new word he reads, he loves her so much more.

 

_1\. Distractions_

_1a. Puppies_

_1b. Quotes_

_1c. A list of your favorite movies_

_2\. Coping Skills_

_2a. Phone numbers_

_3\. Articles, papers, general scholarly thoughts on depression and its treatments_

_4\. Reasons I love you_

_5\. Reference_

 

The binder is blue, which feels appropriate. Light blue, though. On its spine, she's added a title. It's a drawing of a little, lopsided heart. And he knows. He feels it. She loves him so.

**Author's Note:**

> looks like i actually went through with adding to the series. i'm as surprised as you are. who's to say if there will be more  
> also, it turns out i can write more than 2k words. who knew? not me  
> questions, comments, little things that make you stupid happy (like good parking spots when it's raining), and concerns all welcome


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